James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Monday, October 29, 2007

RISD student Kelly Berg said that one of the favorite parts of her job as monitor in the Nature Lab of Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island is handling the Madagascar hissing cockroaches. “The make great pets,” she told me. "They hiss a bit, but they’re quite friendly."

The lab’s collection gives art students access to living animal specimens to use as models. Besides the giant cockroaches, there are millipedes, rhinoceros chameleons, rats, frogs and turtles.

There’s also a large variety of animal skulls and skeletons. One room adjoining the nature lab collection had half a dozen human skeletons with drawing easels set up beside them.

Along the walls were cabinets crammed full of shells, seedpods, and crystals.

This student from nearby Brown University, one of the Ivy League colleges, was doing a careful pencil drawing of a stuffed squirrel. Brown students can share in RISD’s art offerings. In exchange, RISD students can broaden their education by enrolling in Brown’s first-rate courses in academic subjects to supplement the focused art curriculum.

RISD students also have access to the collection of the RISD art museum, whose collection ranks with some of the finest small museum collections of the northeast.

Illustration chairman Nick Jainschigg (above) toured me through the building which houses classes for the approximately 250 illustration majors. The school has graduated some notable illustrators like Chris Van Allsburg and has attracted some current high-profile teaching talent, including Jon Foster. Classes keep current with emerging trends, and include offerings in graphic novels, 3-D character animation, and video game design.

We met painting instructor Nick Palermo, here demonstrating a “View Catcher” device, which helps new painting students frame a composition. Palermo’s class was working on oil studies of a model posing on a stand with colorful props and upshot lighting.

Part of what makes RISD’s program unique is the winter session, sandwiched between the regular semesters. The six week winter session is both informal and intensive, allowing students to try out something outside their normal experience, like stone lithography or glassblowing.

The Fleet Library in the newly refurbished bank building contains not only a rich collection of art books dating back to the 1860s, but also a vast array of scrapbooks, sketchbooks, design collections, clippings, art prints and ephemera.

More than one person admitted that not enough RISD students take advantage of the school’s rich resources, and that the requirement to use them is not woven enough into the curriculum. But for a motivated student, RISD certainly has a lot to offer.

9 comments:

Amanda
said...

Wow...I go to a prestigious art school, but we have NOTHING like the nature lab that RISD has. It is an amazing idea. I'd be there everyday after classes when I could. Art colleges across the country should look to RISD as an example. Thanks so much for sharing :)

Oh how I wish I could have made it back to RISD for your lecture, Mr. Gurney!

I am probably not alone when I say that we RISD students simply didn't have enough time to adequately enjoy all that our environment provided us. Although I do feel wholly satisfied with my education, I also wish that more opportunities were given within classroom time that took advantage of the unique resources like the Nature Lab and library. [And I am especially bummed that the new and improved library opened the year after I graduated!]

Many thanks for the peek behind the scenes of your inspiring creative life!